London Region ICT Infrastructure Project

Background

Lasa has been working with the Circuit Rider community to develop training and a set of standards in order to:

provide quality, reassurance and safeguards to the VCS organisations with which we work;

maintain and enhance the values of the sector; raise the profile of Circuit Riders and Circuit Riding; and provide VCS organisations with independent advice and not

champion any particular solution.

July 17 2007

In 2007 and 2008 Lasa was funded by the ICT Hub to work towards achieving these aims. This process commenced with a stakeholder event as part of the feasibility study on 17th July 2007 at NCVO in London which examined:

the principles by which Riders work; ICT standards which organisations could aspire to; the skills required for a Rider to assist organisations to

achieve those standards; feedback on commissioned research from ADP Consultancy

and Summit Collaborative; and possible scenarios for training and mentoring Riders.

ICT Hub project deliverables

Assisted by the Advisory Group, the Project: published the circuit rider principles; ran the 2008 Circuit Rider Conference; produced Round-Up, the Circuit Rider news digest; consulted on and published a set of ICT standards for

organisations upon which to build a skill-set for Riders - Improving Circuit Rider Service to Voluntary and Community Organisations ~ Tools To Build Circuit Rider Competencies ;

Set up www.ukriders.info started researching a training path for Riders based on peer

exchange, collaborative online resources, mentoring and partnership.

London Region ICT Infrastructure Project

The 3 year London Region ICT Infrastructure Project funded by the Big Lottery under their BASIS programme aims to carry out the following:

increase the understanding in VCS infrastructure organisations that ICT is a capacity building issue

develop a sustainable capacity building programme to improve circuit riders use of tools and resources

ensure a training framework is in place in order to provide a quality-assured professional ICT services to frontline groups in London.

train VCS ICT support providers (based mainly in infrastructure organisations) by the end of the project, standardising and assuring the quality of circuit rider skills for VCS organisations

help increase the investment in ICT from funders and frontline groups by the collation of case studies to present to London funders, which demonstrate the effectiveness of circuit rider ICT support services to frontline London VCS organisations.

Project programme

The first year of the project concentrates on: Establishing the advisory group Establishing quarterly Circuit Rider Forum meetings Accreditation and quality assurance research Developing training modules and methodologies Setting up online tools and resources Researching funder investment into ICT and improvements

of frontline services Setting up evaluation framework

The following years concern themselves more with delivering training, case studies and monitoring effectiveness of the programme to the Riders and frontline organisations.

Where we are now…

Marc Osten, direct from Aix-en-Provencehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhPWAQcEg1c

Level 3 competencies - objectives

1 The Circuit Rider understands what the basic characteristics are of the voluntary and community sector as a whole as well as the current trends and issues facing it.

2 The Circuit Rider understands what the basic characteristics are of individual voluntary and community organisations, both ICT and non-ICT related.

3 The Circuit Rider has more specific knowledge about those basic organisational and ICT specific issues

4 The Circuit Rider has basic consulting skills

5 The Circuit Rider has basic information, communication assessment and problem-solving technology skills

A Lasa certification scheme?

Feedback and discussion: Does this resonate with you? Would having an adviser to help with developing a personal

plan be welcomed? Collaborative learning environment – peer exchange,

mentoring, online workspace, webinars, classroom sessions, Forum meetings

Are you prepared to get involved? Barriers? What can you offer? Do we develop a directory of Rider

resources through skills auditing?